Flow Control Debate to Senate Committee

By Paul Gable

The debate on whether the Horry County Solid Waste Authority should be allowed to continue a flow control monopoly over garbage generated in the county will move to the S.C. Senate Medical Affairs Committee March 21^st.

Legislation called the ‘Business Freedom to Choose Act’ has already passed the S.C. House in this new legislative session. It is now up to the Senate to see if it will join the House in making a government established monopoly illegal.

The SWA will have Executive Director Danny Knight and Government Affairs Director Mike Bessant in attendance at the committee meeting to speak for maintaining the monopoly.

The committee will hear testimony on whether the Business Freedom to Choose Act, already passed by the S.C. House, should be referred to the full Senate for a vote.

The act would make the existing government monopoly flow control over solid waste disposal in Horry County illegal.

Since the flow control monopoly was established in Horry County in 2009, at least four private hauling companies and several construction and demolition debris landfills have suffered loss of business with a resulting reduction in employment.

Tomorrow’s testimony will inevitably include the SWA’s old standbys of potential financial liability to the county and loss of recycling programs to the imagined horror of hazardous waste from New York City enveloping Horry County.

All are bogus. The SWA flow control monopoly has always been about punishing small, private industry for the benefit of a large, wasteful government established agency.

The bill faces opposition in the Senate as two Horry County senators, Luke Rankin and Greg Hembree, support the government monopoly position at the expense of free enterprise.